Latvia, Home of The Letts (1924)
The Lett is friendly, shrewd, conservative, persevering, without the «Nichevo» spirit of Russian fatalism. Having waited so long for his opportunity, having won his freedom against such odds, he is determined to make the most of it.
Tas ir citāts no 1924. gadā National Geographic publicēta raksta, kura autors bija tolaik pirmais un slavenākais žurnāla ārvalstu koresponents ar zīmīgu pirmo vārdu — Maynard Owen Williams. Pirms četriem gadiem Latvija vēl karoja.
Ne īpaši tālajā 2011. gadā pieķēros šo manās rokās nonākušo garo, aizraujošo un, kas svarīgi, brīnišķīgām fotogrāfijām bagāto materiālu digitalizēt, bet kaut kas ne sagāja un pametu pusratā.
Varētu padomāt, ka šis ir tāds vienkāršs darbiņš, bet nē. Man gribējās pa smuko. Bija ko noņemties… Tas prasīja diezgan daudz laika. Ceru, ka bija tā vērts. Pāris vietās rakstā ir arī saites uz vikipēdiju. Atrodi-nu :) Nācās ieviest arī dažādus jaunumiņus savā blogošanas rīkā, lai raksts neizskatās pēc nabaga radinieka.
Rezultātu laipni lūgti lasīt zemāk. Nekādu reklāmu, nekādu klikšķināmu galeriju, nekādu abonēšanas piedāvājumu, nekādu triku. Viss izlasāms, laiski glāstot savu telefonu. Garākais ieraksts šī bloga 26 gadu pastāvēšanas vēsturē.
Ja jūs atrodat nepilnības tekstā, tā vietā, lai piesārņotu komentārus ar 'tur trūkst burts', dariet man zināmu uz e-pastu (laacz suņeic laacz taška lv).
PS Diez vai autors, rakstot «see page 404» nojauta, ka pēc gadsimta tas nozīmēs ko citu.
PPS Par to sajūtu, kuru noķer, lasot šo visu, man ir tik daudz, ko teikt, ka laikam paklusēšu…
Published in National Geographic Magazine, volume XLVI, issue number four, October, 1924.
Latvia, Home of The Letts
One of the Baltic Republics Which Is Successfully Working Its Way to Stability
By MAYNARD OWEN WILLIAMS
AUTHOR OF «THE COASTS OF CORSICA,» «AT THE TOMB OF TUTANKHAMEN,» «THROUGH THE HEART OF HINDUSTAN,» «RUSSIA'S ORPHAN RACES,» ETC., IN THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Five hundred years ago, when Riga ranked with Lübeck. Hamburg, and Bremen as one of the chief cities of the Hanseatic League, it had a bachelors' club, made up of men from out of town, called the Schwarzhäupter Gilde, or Blackheads. Their patron was Saint George, perpetually engaged in almost impaling a dragon. The sign of their society was a blackamoor's head. When they went to church they sat in stalls on the ends of which were carved big blackamoor heads.
After all these years, the guild still exists; their clubhouse, standing above the tiny stream from which the city took its name, is still one of the show places of Riga, and those barbaric carvings, which would look more at home in a minstrel show than in a church, still decorate the doors of their high pews in the Lutheran Cathedral.
Pry off one of these low-browed symbols, tip it back so that its pillow will be Lithuania and the lesser known of the Polish corridors, let its woolly pate rub against Soviet Russia, and its flat-nosed, thick-lipped face will run along the present boundary between Latvia and Esthonia (see map. page 405).
A rocky eyebrow reaches across toward the Great Munamagi in Esthonia. 1.063 feet high, the most prominent eminence in this part of the flat Baltic plain. The cheekbones are formed of the Vidzeme (Livonia) plateau, between the Daugava (Western Dvina) and the Esthonian frontier. The Adam's apple of the slender throat is Riga, once a great industrial city larger than Stockholm, Christiania, or Copenhagen and now a thriving capital.
As I left the Alps, late in August, a well-known educator asked, «Where are you off to now?»
«Latvia,» I replied.
His comment was more candid than professorial.
«I'll bite.» he said. «Where is Latvia ?»
His question approximated that of all persons with whom I spoke. They did not ask where my furs were or whether I thought reindeer milk would agree with me. But they wanted to.
In A Riga Cafe Before The Hour for Opera
Sitting in one of Riga's cozy cafés five days later, I realized how erroneous had been some of my own preconceptions. As I denied myself a third tempting pastry, light as a summer cloud, and the dark beauty — at another table — laid down her perfumed cigarette to regard me through her lorgnette, I wondered why I had bought emergency confectioner's chocolate on my way through Paris.
Beneath shaded lamps, light chatter rose after the hush during Massenet's «Élégie.» New Riga was fortifying itself with dainties before going to its 7 o'clock opera. Serious dining would not begin until eleven, when the cabarets would take up the task of entertaining where café and «Carmen» left off.
Riga, but yesterday cluttered with barricades and cratered with shellfire, now bustles with life so irrepressible that after the town cabarets have ceased to sparkle, at two in the morning, new Latvia goes out to Luna Park, in the once splendid Kaiserwald, to eat, drink, and be merry until the sun rises over the Stintsee and touches to flame the narrow lines of gold which divide into pockets the orange domes of the Greek Catholic Cathedral.
Before the door are the figures of the Virgin Mary and Saint Maurice, while Saint George perches on its roof-tree and King Arthur on its clock. Upstairs in the Schwarzhaupterhaus, as it is familiarly called, there is an assembly hall walled in by expansive pictures of the former great. A windowless room in the basement houses the shield, boots, stirrups, and mail shirt of Gustavus Adolphus, a blue satin slipper of Anne, Duchess of Courland from 1711 to 1730, who evidently captured the fancy of these imperturbable bachelors, and numerous other relics.
Photograph by Carl Schneider
Latvia suffered worse from the war than did Belgium. In the Riga district alone, 24.000 buildings were completely destroyed; but Riga is still an unbelievably fine city. In the birthright of achieved freedom, the new capital got something the best of it. Already a splendid metropolis, with fine streets, excellent buildings, and a wonderful center-of-the-city park system, it had grafted on to it a more or less expensive government, with nine legations abroad and the most perfectly balanced budget in the world, though the means of balancing it would make a Blondin envious.
The wealth of Latvia is in its farms. Industry is almost dead; trade is reduced to a fraction of its former volume; yet Riga is a city of luxury, and the countryside which furnishes the wealth seems cheerless and poverty-stricken by comparison.
Ten years ago Latvia's largest city had four times as many industrial workers as there are now in the whole Republic. The quaint «Old Town,» bristling with church spires, had become encircled by industrial plants which supplied Russia with a diversity of products. Now those chimneys give forth no smoke, hundreds of those windows are broken, and many of those factory walls lie in ruins.
The machinery was evacuated into Russia during the war and, furthermore, there are no markets in which competition with western Europe is possible.
The largest factory in Riga makes rubbers. If there was any place in the world last summer where there was a need for rubbers, raincoats, and diving suits, that place was Latvia; yet if the Provodnik factory in Riga worked at full capacity for a week, it would produce enough rubber goods to last Latvia and the surrounding countries for a year.
To rehabilitate the factories would not only flood the available markets with goods for which there would be scant sale, but would also flood Riga with communist laborers, whose presence in such numbers would menace the stability of the State.
The old Schloss of Riga, now the home of the President of Latvia, was erected in 1330 by the Teutonic Order, rebuilt between 1491 and 1515, and altered in 1682 and 1783.
Photograph by Carl Schneider
On the left of the aisle of this brick church, begun in 1211, are the pews belonging to the Blackheads, a society of bachelors of the better class who enjoyed considerable influence during the fifteenth century, with the kinky-haired Moor's head, their insignia, much in evidence (see text, page 401). This peculiar emblem of the order was probably adopted because Maurice, their patron saint, was usually considered a Moor.
Photograph by Maynard Owen William
During the last eight years five wars have swept over the little Latvian nation. It is an easy matter to remember the military strength of the country. They are a nation of 2,000,000, with a standing army of 20,000 and 2,000 Boy Scouts.
Photograph by J. Recksta
Many of the small farmers, who formerly cultivated plots belonging to the Baltic barons, arc now tilling their own soil. More than 10,000 of them to-day arc raising flax, hay and vegetables, or cattle and bees on land which has been taken from the Russian Crown properties and from large estates (see text, page 424).
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
The boundaries of the new nation, which has an area about half as large as New York State and a population about equal to that of Philadelphia, roughly outline a recumbent blackamoor's head, with his kinky pate toward Russia, the profile thrust against southern Esthonia, the narrow throat at Riga, and the back resting upon Lithuania (see text, page 401). The place names are in the spelling now appearing on maps published by the Latvian Government. The more familiar German or Russian names in most instances have been given in parentheses.
Drawn by Charles E. Riddiford
In Riga there is free import and export of gold and silver, and during my prolonged stay in Latvia the exchange rate did not vary a santime. In present-day Europe these two facts stand out like twin lighthouses marking a channel between dark and dangerous coasts.
In 1922 there were many things which one simply could not buy. An automobile for pleasure purposes was almost a curiosity. Food was cheap, but of poor quality. Drink was a memory and a hope. To-day the shops have everything one can ask for. When he has discovered the proper places, the traveler can dine better in Riga than in most European capitals. The wine card now reads like a reparations bill, interminably long and with exceedingly high figures.
Although the cost of taxis is three times what it is in Paris, your modern Lett thinks nothing of running down to the Strand in summer just for the cooling ride along the sand dunes beside the Baltic. After years of tossing on the stormy sea of war and uncertainty, Jack Lett is spending his money like a sailor ashore.
Riga's Contradictions
At the extreme left is the tower of the Schloss, the home of the Latvian President, and at the right the tower of the Rathaus, or former city hall, built in 1750. Already the progressive and industrious Letts are making plans to harness the waters of the Daugava (Düna) as a hydro-electric remedy for the nation's shortage of coal.
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
Riga is a homelike city without an individual home: a fresh green city without a single private lawn, and with immaculate streets kept clean by women whitewings; a city of flower girls wrinkled with age and women «newsies» who seem better fitted to fireside gossip than to sitting out in the cold rain selling Latvia's surprising variety of newspapers and journals; of elevators in which only the favored ride: of ultramodern cabarets and lotto clubs that succeed where dance halls fail: of countless children and parks; of stylish, trim, silk-stockinged city women and knobby-ankled, stocky country women to whom dress is a matter of warmth and modesty; of splendid churches where the services are all held
in German, and an equally splendid Opera where Wagner is sung in Lettish; of extraordinarily good portrait photographers and people who object to modern portraits and want each detail sharp, so that every hair, if not numbered, can be counted if necessary.
The Latvian President's Unique Flag
Strictly speaking, Riga is not a seaport, and because of this fact is closed to navigation for a few weeks in winter. Vessels drawing up to 22 feet find, in the midst of a flat, uninteresting coast, a narrow river up which they come for ten miles before tying up to the quay beside the cream-colored walls of the old castle (see page 403).
Having already served for 160 years, this ancient schhss was rebuilt while Columbus was trying to get Ferdinand and Isabella to finance his faith. Above one of the round towers there flies, not the flag of Latvia, with its red and white cross on a white field, but a white flag, quartered by twin bars of red, whose inner ends inclose two griffins supporting a shield on which they are repeated below a rising sun and three stars.
The griffin on the left is red on a silver field and stands for Kurzeme (Courland) and Zemgale. the two southwest provinces. The other griffin looks like the same thing seen from the other side of the fabric, being silver on red, except that it brandishes a dagger and stands for Vidzeme (Livonia) and Latgale. A garland of oak leaves and a ribbon with a white line between two red ones suggest the Latvian colors.
This intricate banner is that of the President of the Republic of Latvia, born November 18, 1918. Its presence on that ancient castle, dating back nearly 600 years, proclaims it to be the nation's White House.
The prosaic walls of Riga facing the Daugava assume a fairy splendor when sunset pulls them out from the background of lowering heavens and bathes them in quicksilver or gilds them with gold. Only then are they worthy of the towering spires which so distinguish the city's sky line (see page 406).
Since the practical demise of Leningrad (Petrograd), Riga is probably the most important, commercially and industrially, of the earstwhile Russian towns on the Baltic.
Photograph by J. Reeksta
One real pride of the Opera from the Lettish standpoint is that German. French, and Italian have been abolished from the librettos and the words are now sung in Lettish (see text, page 409), a storm of national patriotism having overtaken the Letts, who have won their independence after having cherished it as a subject people for 700 years.
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
Mother at the left sticks to her knitting and will have nothing to do with the new-fangled sewing machine. But she is not in touch with the spirit of the Latvian Republic, which is eagerly buying American-made plows, harvesters, tractors, and textile machinery. The new Government even went so far as to purchase tractors to lend out in war-devastated districts to facilitate reconstruction work.
Photograph by Klio
Women Check Their Hats at The Lettish Opera
Under a blue sky and from the side, the Opera is so barnlike that one expects to read on its roof that "Children cry for it.'' But by late afternoon, when the sun has crept around to the classic facade, this building becomes a charming casket, of silver or gold, according to the light.
By moonlight these yellow walls turn marble and the colonnade in front reminds one of the Parthenon. The interior is rather plain, except for rich hangings on the side boxes and the decorations of the President's loge, in the center of the lowest of three horseshoe balconies.
Opera is well mounted here and well sung, although the Lettish words in «Tosca» or Carmen,« »Rigoletto« or »Faust" sound strange. There are too many consonants and they get in one another's way.
The principals are well cast and the chorus is large and, from a musical standpoint, well trained. The young women, with their naturally fine figures, have a charm which exceeds that of the chorus in Paris.
Tickets in Riga costs from four to eighty cents. Ladies must check their hats and men their coats, without charge or tips. When the curtain goes up, the doors are closed and the late comer misses an act. Evening dress is little indulged in and the "walk around'' between the acts, though not showy, is pleasant.
The future holds great promise for Latvia, not because of its own resources alone, but because its three magnificent harbors provide logical outlets for the great wealth of the as yet unorganized Russia. Riga is ice-bound for only about four weeks during the year, and Liepaja (Libau) and Ventspils (Windau) for perhaps four days each. Dredging operations at Ventspils are now under way in order to make it possible for the largest ocean-going vessels to dock at its wharves.
Photograph by J. Reeksta
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
Various forms of bread, ranging from pea-shooter ammunition, through wedding and teething rings and ring-toss circles, to life-preservers, are ordinarily displayed. The balloon-tire variety in the photograph is Russian and tastes like a combination doughnut, educator biscuit, and hard-tack (see text, page 418).
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
Latvia's Early History is Legendary
Latvia modestly claims to be 5,000 years old.
Undoubtedly the Letts have inhabited their land from a very early date, but inasmuch as folklore, superstitious rites, and pagan ceremonies were more common than reading, writing, or arithmetic, their remote beginnings are lost in a fog of legend.
By the middle of the 12th century exact records came into use, and with the introduction of Christianity by Bishop Meinhard the history of Livonia begins to take definite shape. In 1201 Bishop Albert founded Riga and the next year founded the Order of the Brothers of the Sword, a group of northern Crusaders who paved the way for the Baltic barons and their huge landholdings, which are only now being broken up.
These street-cleaning women do their work well, the thoroughfares and parks being maintained in perfect condition. In fact, all Latvia seems to be experiencing a "spring-cleaning" spree. Every missing brick in Riga dislodged by war or neglect is being replaced.
Photograph by Klio
The flower girls of Latvia are more often than not wrinkled with age and bent by toil. But Latvia owes a heavy debt to its women, who drive the wagons, harvest the flax, pile up the grain, tend the cattle, sweep the streets, pull the carts, run the hotels, tend the street markets, keep the stores, shovel the sawdust, and juggle the lumber.
Photograph by J. Reeksta
The virtue of every egg is proved by "candling" it with the aid of a square of brown paper wound to form a tube.
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
When the Order of the Sword was threatened, it amalgamated with the Teutonic Order, whose sanction of force as a means of Christianization was like unto theirs. They found plenty of fighting for several centuries.
The conquest of Riga by Gustavus Adolphus, the year after the Mayflower accomplished her historic voyage, was the biggest boost toward freedom that had been given to the Letts.
A Russian Tsar next laid waste the land, but failed to capture Riga. Under Peter the Great, Russia assumed control and civil, religious, and linguistic rights were granted. In 1795 Courland was d e finitely annexed to Russia, and in the time of Alexander III's imperial policies the Russian language was forced on the people.
All this time, from 1200 on. the German landlords were «digging in» for a long occupation, which was recently disturbed, but even yet their tenure is not decided, as the price of the lands taken over by the Republic of Latvia has not been paid to the former exploiters.
All this is rather complex. If one believes the colors on the different maps, Germany. Poland, Sweden, and Russia all have rights in a territory of which the Letts have had possession for thousands of years.
The revolution of 1905 gave to the government of the Tsar and the German landlords a good clue to what was coming to them, and for 13 years the Letts stored up hate and patriotism against the day when a combination of the two woidd win their freedom. A present difficulty is that hate, in achieving its purpose, developed a momentum of its own.
Chauvinism does not rule in Latvia. Peace and security are general, but every position held by a Russian or a German is subject to attacks. Because the Russian theater was habitually crowded and the Lettish theater almost empty during my visit, some enthusiast thought it bright to dash out the lights and fire a revolver over the heads of the crowd.
On the other hand, the Government, thinking that many citizens would want to change their names with the coming of freedom, opened an office for that purpose. When the sole applicant desired to change her name from Lettish to German, the office was closed.
Trade in Latvian flax is a Government monopoly. England, France and Belgium are the chief customers.
Photograph by J. Reeksta
A Land of Three Languages
Many Letts speak three languages. It is a fact of which to be proud. But liberty achieved gave the people an astigmatism toward Russian and German, both of which are world languages. Lettish, for all the fact that it is an Indo — European tongue, perhaps allied to Sanskrit, serves fewer people than there are in Philadelphia, in an area smaller than Maine.
In the old days the signs in Riga were trilingual, with Lettish at the bottom of the list. After seven centuries of cruel exploitation and months of bitter fighting against Germany and Russia, the Letts did not like to see two hated languages above their own. They had new signs printed, with the Lettish at the top and German and Russian below.
A small chauvinistic element, freshmanlike, went even farther. On brand-new signs, paid for by the State, which proclaimed in three languages that dogs should not be allowed to run loose in Riga's truly beautiful parks, the German and Russian portions were tarred out, so that it a man can't read Lettish his dog has some excuse for running wild.
At street-car stops, the Russian on the signposts is painted out, a bar of iron completely covers the German, and the Lettish is the only language which can be read (see illustration, page 417). If one asks the way in German he is naturally directed to streets by their German names; but when he comes to a street sign, both Russian and German having been crossed out, the remaining name bears no relation to the one given him.
The foreigner who speaks Russian or German is looked at askance. Libau has been a port since the days when Latvia was Amber Land and Phoenicians here secured that golden commodity, leaving coins behind as links between the Baltic and the Mediterranean. For hundreds of years Libau has been its name. To-day it is called Liepaja. and the man who unthinkingly asks for a ticket to Libau may miss his train while the ticket-seller, who can't be expected to know everything, tries to recollect just where «Libau» is. One sails from New York to Libau, but from Liepaja to New York.
Photograph by Klio
From one end of prewar Russia to the other the sale of second-hand odds and ends, held usually in the street, is highly popular and is still counted on by the poor to provide the things that might be bought for a fraction more in a regular shop. These are sometimes spoken of as thieves' market (see text, page 418)
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
Under the Russians, Riga was admittedly a trilingual city. This sign originally had words in Russian at the top, in German in the middle, and in Lettish at the bottom. The Letts have painted over the Russian, fastened a bar of iron over the German, and left Lettish as the only guide (see text, page 415).
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
Women Whitewings Keep Riga Neat
Perhaps Riga is too splendid a city for the present life of Latvia. Reduced to one-third of its population and changed from an industrial city to a white-collar capital, it cannot put all of itself in repair. There are sections where bats will nest before workers again occupy the existing buildings. But, leaving aside these restricted areas, Riga is neat and trim.
From one end of Latvia to the other, bridges are being rebuilt, roads restored to their former excellence, buildings put in order, and signs painted. Even the superstitious must walk under ladders.
The women whitewings do their work well; An hour after the open-air markets have broken up, the piles of litter are removed. The parks are maintained in perfect condition, and the great masses of old-fashioned flowers are laid out with painstaking care. Riga comes as near to being a spotless town as any city in Europe.
Within a stone's throw of the American Consulate one can buy American typewriters, adding and duplicating machines, but the old-time abacus is used in the Piank of Latvia. The cashier, in true bureaucrat style, calmly blew a cloud of cigarette smoke in my face and then demanded my name, as though I were a rookie reporting for drill. At another bank I was exceptionally well treated. But the more an American sees of foreign banking methods, the more he appreciates the courtesy, the dispatch, and the efficiency of the American institution, be it in Washington, New York, Chicago, or Paris.
During my stay, the Letts were making the change from roubles to latts or gold francs, at 50 roubles or 100 santimes to the latt. The confusion was indescribable.
The Lett, like Riga, is a strange mixture of old and new. He has the qualities of primitive peasant and pushing business man. Carrying his brief case toward the Bourse, he still suggests the soil. A city dweller in appearance, a man who would be awkward at a plow handle or a horse's head, he nevertheless seems to have his family tree set in a farm.
Lotto Is Latvia's Mah Jong, Bridge, and Poker
The Letts love all kinds of amusements, but the one indoor sport that can break up anything, from a dance or a dinner to a political meeting or a movie, is lotto. The most sumptuous dancing palace in Riga has been given over to this game, which holds the people under its spell until the policeman who guards the door comes to say that the party is over for the night.
Photograph by J. Reeksta
Two or three hundred people of both sexes sit at tables littered with lotto cards in a room which the men keep idled with smoke. Although the lottery machine into which the numbered balls are poured is designed to break up any logical sequence, it is an admirable place to learn to count. In a clear but monotonous voice the man at the machine calls out the numbers in Lettish, German, and Russian, as they fall from the machine. Lotto ignores linguistic chauvinism, and for those to whom three languages are not enough there is a score board on which the numbers are displayed.
In Riga's Vegetable and Fruit Market
Every day Riga renews its touch with the soil. Along the quay and in the old Alexander Platz are held the open-air markets to which the peasants bring their flowers, vegetables, fruits, and mushrooms. Instead of such low groggeries as one expects to find alongshore in a port city, there are long rows of country wagons full of cabbages and kraut, carrots, potatoes, and onions.
Here and there wander the few Rus-sians who carry over their shoulders strings of teething-ring hard-tack like single-jointed pretzels, which they peddle to those with Slavic tastes (see page 411).
There are many kinds of fruit. On a single visit I found cherries, pears, apples, blueberries, gooseberries, and raspberries, plums, currants, and a red berry which no one could name for me in English, but which is gathered in the woods and is most popular of all. The strawberries grown beside the Baltic are said to surpass any the rest of the world can offer.
Vegetables are plentiful and of excellent quality, but the restaurants seem to consider it their duty to charge relatively high prices for them, to remove the taint of their plebeian origin. An order of a few carrots or some delicious cauliflower costs as much as a filet mignon which melts in the mouth.
A fourth of the area of Latvia is forest-clad. Sawn timber, furniture, paper, matches, wood distillates, and agricultural implements are exported.
Photograph by Klio
During the four months of spring and summer the peasants work from 4 in the morning until 7, when they have breakfast. Work after breakfast, work alter luncheon, and work after the evening meal is their continuous program while the crops are growing. In the winter there are repairs to be made and threshing, weaving, and spinning to be done.
Photograph by J. Reeksta
More than three-fourths of the trees in Latvia's great wooded expanse are conifers. The timber exports reach $6,000,000 annually. The Government does not exploit its forests, but auctions the privilege of cutting in certain areas.
Photograph by J. Reeksta
Much of Latvia's valuable wood crop is annually turned into manufactured products. Five of the Republic's large paper mills export part of their output to Soviet Russia, England and United States.
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
Hasenholm Island is almost a lumber raft itself, with piles of timber stretching as far as one can see and a fringe of floating logs nearly touching the opposite shores.
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
In The Flea Market
Less spectacular, but equally typical of Old Russia, is the weekly flea market (you don't bargain for 'em, but you get them just the same), which is held in the Moscow suburb on Sundays. Near at hand are rows of small shops, with all sorts of cheap notions, but the flea market proper—if a market with such a name can be proper—is held in the street (see page 416).
Things No Thief Would Steal
These markets are sometimes called thieves' markets, but no thief would steal such junk. They are rather the want-ad columns of provincial trade. Some one has something that he or she does not want and. in order to get rid of it, is willing to go to a fixed place on market day and sit down in the sun, if any, or stand in the rain, as there is likely to be, and watch it until some one takes it off his hands or he has to carry it home again.
Canary birds and religious pictures often figure in the exhibits. There are always books in several languages and sheet music. One man had a lot of old coats for sale, including a bright-blue one with gilt buttons.
«It's a little tight across the front and he is growing fast,» said a capable-looking woman, while her boy eyed the alluring buttons.
«That's the beauty of a double-breasted coat,» urged the peddler. «It can be let out on both sides.» Anyone who knows the Lettish woman knows whether he sold the coat.
There were kid gloves, once white; a stuffed dove, evidently left over from peace negotiations and somewhat the worse for wear; a family Bible with imposing initials on a brass name plate; several 1910 calendars; a spyglass without a back lens; rosy-cheeked savings banks like apples; paper flowers, truer than life; group photographs dating from the time when Dundreary whiskers and a derby were signs of male beauty.
Along the curb were several shoe dealers. (If the shoes look about right, you try them on yourself.) A woman sat down on a rheumatic sofa to pull on a pair.
«Do you want to break that sofa?» asked the owner.
«No,» answered the woman, assuming a storklike position and tugging at the rough shoe. «I was trying it out, thinking I might buy it. But if it's so weak, I won't take it.»
There was a good-looking violin, but the dealer, who was not a virtuoso, drove the thought of buying out of the minds of everyone present by playing a few bars to show how good it was.
There were stringless tennis rackets; a pile of collars and cuffs, which had been worn but not laundered ; ribbons, sweaters, beads, and beds; and baby carriages that had earned their way thither by acting as delivery vans. The prize of one man's collection was a high heel from a lady's slipper covered with scarlet kid.
Earnest arguments everywhere, but no real noise—only the low buzz of a well-oiled business machine.
Riga, like Leningrad (Petrograd). has a time schedule all its own. Daylight-saving might well have originated there, for the city people use as little of it as possible. Whether it is that the white nights of summer instill late habits which carry over into fall, or whether the winter nights are so long that they don't know what to do with daylight when they have it, one can't say. Nothing but the opera gets under way until late. About the time that New Yorkers, permanent or temporary, are pouring forth from half a hundred theaters, the Lettish pleasure-seeker is just beginning to enjoy his Wiener Schnitzel.
The Government workers have a one-session day, so that they lunch after three. «Where do the people eat?» was a question I asked myself for several days. It was the «when» of it. that deceived me. Sitting late one rainy afternoon and writing letters in a splendid dining room in which I had three full-dress waiters, a dozen mirrors, a wide expanse of spotless, silver-dotted nappery. and several dozen heavy hand-carved chairs all to myself, I looked up, about tea time, to discover that my monopoly had been broken. The lunchers had arrived.
The 7 o'clock opera thus becomes a sort of matinee and the after-theater cabaret comes into its own. The night life in Riga starts late and reaches top speed long after midnight.
Latvians Are Fond of The Seashore
More than half the trains in Latvia in summer run between the capital and the Strand. Motor buses leave the city at seven and return at two in the morning. From Bulli to Dubulti there runs a big wooded dune rising between the summer homes, hidden in the pine forest, and the fine sand beach.
Photograph by J. Reeksta
There are several modest bathing houses, and the fishers, after their black boats are beached and the day's catch sent to market, dry their nets on stakes driven into the sand. One fisherman sailed out of San Francisco for many years and speaks good English. As we separated he gave me that parting word which is now popular from Dantzig to Narva when English is spoken. It is less elegant than an Arabic farewell, but it has a home sound after all. Just, «So long!»
Latvia is mainly an agricultural country, about equally divided among cultivated fields, forests, and pastures. Although peatbogs cover some 10 per cent of the land, there is relatively little which the Letts consider useless.
The great estates of the Baltic barons are being broken up and new roof trees, crowned with oak wreaths, are rising from one end of the country to the other. Cooperative societies with their own grain elevators, repair shops, experimental farms, agricultural schools, and printing offices, are assuming the burden of technical education, machine buying, and butter and crop selling.
Until the division of the estates, this was borne by the landed proprietors, many of whom entrusted the technical details of their properties to skilled managers and gave themselves to cultural pursuits far above the level to which the poor but literate Letts as a whole could aspire.
Latvia's agrarian reform has not endeared her to all nations, but it has done much to relieve the miseries of a land-hungry peasantry and to prevent communism from becoming paramount in the politics of the State. With Bolshevism pressing in one side and Baltic barons sitting on the lid. something had to happen. The lid blew off.
Although the former proprietors have been left in possession of far larger properties than any of those being distributed to new landholders, the whole problem of agriculture has been materially changed and the day of the tractor delayed. The administration of an estate of 180.000 acres was one thing: its division among 4.500 new proprietors, each owning 40 acres, introduces new problems, economic and technical as well as political.
The enemies of agrarian reform insist that the improvement of the human condition will involve a consequent deterioration of stock and agricultural products.
But Latvia assumes that it can as easily become a second Denmark by approximating the human conditions among the Danes as it can by copying stock-raising methods alone.
So closely do the neighboring Lithuanians and Letts resemble each other in personal appearance, language, occupations, and the hardships of life that foreigners usually identify them as one.
Photograph by Ernest Peterfly
In the labor of Latvia there is neither age nor sex line. Children assume definite duties at the age of seven, and old women stagger into the towns under heavy loads of toil in water to rescue swamp grass for hay.
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
The Remains of One of The Finest Roads in The World
The old chaussée between Berlin and St. Petersburg (Leningrad), across what is now Latvia, was one of the finest roads in the world. My chauffeur, who drove the 30 miles from Riga to Jelgava (Mitau) in two hours, had often made the distance in pre-war days in 35 minutes. There are stretches now where four high-powered cars could race abreast, but at the time of my visit several road crews were hard at work piling stone, crushing it with modern machinery, and resurfacing this highway, which was long subject to shell-fire and war traffic and is only now being thoroughly restored.
The region between Riga and Jelgava has not lost its war look. Trenches still sprawl across the thin soil. Barbed wire entanglements are hidden in the underbrush. Several of the stations are quite dwarfed by piles of barbed wire. Scores of peasants are living in shelters not much better than those used by troops during the war (see page 404).
Cement gun emplacements were boarded up in back and provided with a single window. In one an old woman and her son were living, seemingly contented, with a sunflower garden and a faithful but suspicious dog.
Along the roadsides and in the fields from which hay or grain had been harvested, young girls and boys were watching their herds.
Photograph by J. Reeksta
Flax, Staff of Latvia's Economic Life
Flax and lumber are Latvia's main exports, and in Riga both are impressive. Flax is a Government monopoly and is conditioned and inspected as is silk in Japan. Dray after dray goes toward the steamers laden with handkerchief, collar, and lingerie material as yet in a very untidy state, looking like the unkempt swabs with which an attendant erases one's epidermis in a Turkish bath. An inspector thrusts pointed irons through the uncouth bundles to make sure that the soil of Latvia is not being exported as a filler.
We passed scores of flax fields in different parts of Latvia. Although assured that those seen were full size, it was hard to believe that flax was more than a catch-crop filling in odd corners, instead of a mainstay of Lettish commerce, rising to 35.000 tons a year.
The same is true of lumber. The island above the railway bridge across the Daugava is almost a lumber raft itself, with piles of timber stretching as far as one can see and a fringe of floating logs almost touching the opposite shores (see illustrations, pages 421 and 422. Although one is never out of sight of trees and often in the heart of a forest, it is not until a wharf or a sawmill is approached that the lumber of Latvia becomes impressive.
Lettish journals predominate, but one can also buy Russian, German and French papers and magazines, as well as the continental editions of two American and several English news-papers at this stand in the Latvian capital.
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
At Riga, Liepaja, and Ventspils (Windau), lumberyards are the most prominent features of the scene; yet this squared timber for export represents only one-seventh of the total production, which is not only used for heating and building and for roofing over the hay crop, but also for driving locomotives and factories. Two-thirds of Latvia's lumber is used near the place where it grows; yet her export lumber has made an enviable reputation.
In The Capital of Courland
Jelgava, the chief inland town of Latvia, and for centuries, during which it was known as Mitau, the capital of Courland, is a dull place. Its main building was a palace, which took a third of a century to build and was completed in 1772. It always had an aristocratic air, for it not only harbored Louis XVIII of France while Napoleon was playing ducks and drakes with European nobility, but was also the residence of the governor of Courland while that province had its own colony in Africa and owned the island of Tobago, off the coast of Venezuela.
During the Lettish fight for independence the enemy were forced to withdraw from Mitau, but they took time to burn this building in such a thorough manner that the terra-cotta-colored palace was completely gutted and not a bit of charred wood remains attached to the walls.
Jelgava itself lacks distinction. The big cobbled square is surrounded by mediocre buildings, and once the morning market has taken to its wheels and gone home, it is a lonesome place. All around the town are low fields covered with coarse hay, which is harvested as carefully as if it were the choicest timothy or clover. Boats are used for getting about, and one big haycock, with a woman dressed in bright red at the top, was on an island. The rivers here divide into a thousand tiny streams, like the veins in a hand. Small streams run down the Lielupe, which was the Semgaller Aa, to Dubulti, on the Riga Strand.
A species of sea trout, which closely resembles the salmon and is often mistaken for it, is found in abundance in Latvian waters. Whitefish of some of the coarser varieties and herring are also plentiful. Quantities of preserved fish are exported.
Photograph by Ernest Peterfly
The bright spots in Jelgava, as in every town from Ventspils to Zilupe, are the schools. The crop of young folks is most promising.
Liepaja's Grain Elevators are Now Quiet
Liepaja (Libau) lies between a lake and the sea, which were joined in 1703 by a channel, now the Harbor Canal and the busiest part of the port. Along the banks are not only modern elevators and coal hoists, but old warehouses, with antique iron hinges on their doors, which still serve the needs of the city. With Russian and Siberian grainfields not now using Liepaja as an outlet, the elevators are quiet.
North of the city is the large Military Harbor, with dry docks, repair shops, and barracks, which could easily be converted into warehouses.
Liepaja's prewar hinterland extended to the Dnieper and the Don, but it is only 13 miles farther from Moscow than Ventspils is and it may handle much central-Russia trade in winter, when Riga and Leningrad are closed to traffic.
All around Liepaja are the ruins of old forts. After Japanese bayonets pricked the outstretched paws of the Russian bear, Kaiser Wilhelm insisted that these forts were a menace to German prestige in the Baltic and succeeded in getting them blown up.
Outside the harbor is a Russian cruiser, which was sold by the Petrograd Soviet to some junk dealers in Germany, but was sunk while being towed south. Legends are clustered like barnacles about this wreck. It is said that the Moscow Soviet suspected their Petrograd colleagues of using this worn-out cruiser to smuggle gold out of Russia. The main concern of the Liepaja authorities is how to get rid of this hulk, which almost closed their front door and still remains as a gratuitous reminder of two unpopular nations.
The Latvian is frugral and every fish is salvaged if possible. The women are here shown picking some of the catch out of the meshes of the nets. Tne years ago 10,000 Lettish fishermen earned their living from the Baltic, but during the World War they were forbidden to continue this pursuit. The survivors are now building up the industry again.
Photograph by Ernest Peterfly
On the 23d of June country wagons bring great loads of leafy boughs into town for Saint John's Eve, when young and old participate in the festivities. They wraathe their heads with garlands, the farmers fix on poles small barrels filled with wood or tar and ignite them, and the farmers' wives serve great quantities of flag, round cheeses, called Saint John's Day cheese, to be consumed in the intervals between the singing and dancing.
Photograph by J. Reeksta
Despite the adverse conditions under which the peasants worked before the World War, Latvia was a land of prosperous farms and modern dairying establishments. It was often spoken of as the "Denmark of Russia" because of the productivity of its land and the richness of its butter and cheese. Now the independent land-owners are saving their santimes and buying tractors and motor plows, which were practically unknown here in prewar days.
Photograph by Ernest Peterfly
Liepaja's Open-Air Market
The Liepaja open-air market shows much activity. One starts in at the lower end with barreled fish eloquent of age, moves past enough cabbage heads to provide Russian soup from Daugavpils (Dvinsk) to Vladivostok, and stops to see pink little pigs which came to market in a small cart drawn by a woman, who points out their fine qualities as a mother would show off her baby (see page 436.
Mere some young men in uniform told me that photography was not allowed, and the man who collects the daily license money tried to make me pay for «working» in the market place. On investigation I found that, except in special cases, the old Russian laws still hold, and although one could take photographs in Russia immediately after the Revolution, photographs can only be taken in Latvia by special permission.
In an earthenware bowl of seeds the peasant places an egg as a symbol of frugality, a silver coin and a piece of bread as signs of future yield. In the field she puts the seeds in her mouth and then squirts them into the furrows as she walks along.
Photograph by Ernest Peterfly
The traditional attire of the Letts was conspicuous for its richly embossed breast buckles and coronet-shaped headdress, several varieties of which may still be seen occasionally in the Liepaja district, where the ancient costumes are sometimes worn on festive occasions, such as this.
Photograph by Ernest Peterfly
The Latvian women seldom wear brightly colored garments, but dress for the most part for comfort in dark, inconspicuous colors, but the women of Rucava have attained distinction for their beautiful homespun cloths and embroideries.
Photograph by J. Reeksta
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
Sigulda, known before the World War as Segewoold, is a summer and winter resort. The ruins of the castle of Segewold, built by the Teutonic Order in 1208 and destroyed in the seventeenth century, and the chateau of the Prince Krapotkin have lent a charm to the prettily wooded slopes of the valley, which cause it to be known as Livonian Switzerland (see text, page 443).
Photograph by Klio
Several times in Liepaja my right to take pictures was challenged and proved by the letter which the Foreign Office had kindly provided. As far as working in the market was concerned. I discovered it was because I stood on a box in order to get a better view of the pink pigs, and as the woman had already paid the tax, she entertained me on her box.
A lot of hard-leather moccasins, or pastalas, were watched over by a young girl wearing a Manchester bandanna. The young Lettish women are taking to colored handkerchiefs in place of the stiff, spotless head-shawls of their mothers, and the majority profit from this touch of color close to fresh cheeks and fine eyes.
Milk and cheese products come next. All these displays are in horse-drawn wagons or in handcarts, only slightly smaller. But across a narrow passage there are the various forms of bread, ranging from pea-shooter ammunition, through wedding and teething rings and ring-toss circles to life-preservers. There are also more orthodox loaves of white bread, crisp of crust, that would grace a French patisserie, and round black loaves which would make good hitching blocks.
Carrots, upon which it would seem that soap and a nail brush had been used, vie with gorgeous dahlias and transparent currants; purple cherries and rosy apples add their decorative effects. The egg-sellers seek a corner to themselves, and farther on there are sellers of notions, and the ubiquitous peddler of glass cutters and crockery cement.
Latvia's Debt To Her Women On The Farms
Many a young Lett died in liberating his land from German and Russian; but no one can evaluate the debt that Latvia owes to its old women. Like the mean-looking little Latvian ponies, whose endurance rivals that of the shaggy Tarpans of Siberia and central Asia, they do not look splendid; but they are. But for them, the land that is now Latvia would not lie.
Under pressure of enemy occupation, when the land was stripped, of its crops and hunger was the rule, these brave women carried on. To-day they are the backbone of the country, and the whitest collar or fairest throat at the opera does not so embellish the new State as do these wrinkled old women, who toil during the long summer days, then keep on through the long, cold winter, rain or shine, snow or sleet, driving to market and selling the produce—cheery, brave, enduring in the face of a climate that would discourage a Titan.
Agriculture is the economic backbone of Latvia, and the favorite proverb of the Lett is, "He who cares for the land will be fed by the land." The curious hay-turning implement wielded by some of the workers is peculiarly Latvian and resembles a double-bladed oar.
Photograph by J. Reeksta
Hay is valuable enough in Latvia not to have to furnish its own thatch. But wood is plentiful, so the farmer builds a wooden roof supported by four posts on which it can be raised and lowered like the shelves in a modern bookcase (see text, page 427).
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
The Latvian Republic outstrips its big neighbor, Russia, in literacy, the census of 1920 showing that 70 per cent of the former's population could read and 63 per cent could both read and write. Before the World War, Latvia claims to have had within what are now its national boundaries a largert number of secondary schools in proportion to its population than any other country.
Photograph by V. Grekov
Down near the sea clean-limbed young athletes exercise in the stadium, which occupies a former fort, and the fine friendship between the young men and the fresh-cheeked, deep-lunged girls is a joy to see. Hundreds of these young people every year emigrate to the United States.
Photograph by Henry Kurskops
When dispatches from Riga announced that Latvia had become a republic, the country was found to have many aliases. Latvia, Lettland, Livonia, Livland, Courland, and Latgale are a few of the names by which it has been called.
Photograph by Keystone View Company
Every Ride Through The Country Provides Thrills
The Latvian horses are not yet accustomed to the automobile, and every ride in the back country provides thrills— usually for someone else. To watch these Lettish women handle a pair of frightened horses on a narrow road bordered by deep ditches is to know where the modern Amazon drives her steeds. They are as efficient as the men and not half as cruel.
They must feel fear, for when there is a man driving, their motto is «Safety First.» They drop off the load at the first sound of a motor, with scant attention to pride or modesty; but when they hold the reins, they stick, even if the horses jump a ditch and knock over a rail fence. From eight-year-old cowgirl to wrinkled granny, bent forward under a load of fagots, the country women of Latvia are splendid.
At Ventspils I found women driving the wagons, harvesting the flax, piling the grain, tending the cattle, sweeping the streets, pulling the handcarts, running the hotel where I lunched, waiting on table, tending the street markets, keeping the country stores, shoveling the sawdust, and piling the lumber trimmings at the mill.
The heavy lumber was piled by men, with sole-leather platforms strapped to their right shoulders. If moving the light cars was too hard for the women, a horse was used. But that was unusual.
One ride through that countryside where war has wrecked and woman has saved made man power and horse power seem inadequate terms. The woman power of rural Latvia exceeds the man power and horse power combined.
Future Ports For Russia's Commerce
Liepaja and Ventspils live in the past and the future. Linked to a huge hinterland by rail to Romni and Moscow they rank with Riga, which has direct rail connection with Tsaritzin, on the lower Volga, as future ports of Russia. Both are ice-free throughout the year, but for the present they sit there beside their almost deserted harbors dreaming of the past and planning for the future.
Latvia is making great claims as a future transit country, and the evidence of the past is in her favor. In prewar days one-fourth of Russia's immense tonnage passed through ports now Latvian.
It is impressive that between 1919 and 1922 the number of usable locomotives increased from 111 to 320. But 320 locomotives and about the same number of passenger coaches are utterly inadequate to maintain service over nearly 2.000 miles of track—broad, standard, and narrow gauge. Freight cars are jacked up and their axles changed from one gauge to another for passage from the European to Russian lines. But this is not done with passenger cars.
A Visit to The «Latvian Switzerland»
One morning in Riga I woke to find the sun shining. It occurred to me that it was a good day for an excursion to Sigulda (Segewold) and the Latvian Switzerland. The same thought evidently occurred to most of the residents of Riga.
By twenty minutes before train time there were enough people standing in line to buy third-class tickets to last an hour. More were coming every minute. After being sent from one window to another to buy a second-class ticket, I boarded the train without one. Half an hour late we started, leaving some scores of would-be passengers to go off and play by themselves. I paid a fine for not having a ticket and Spent a delightful day looking at old castles and young folks on a holiday.
Before leaving the station I tried to buy a ticket back to Riga. The early-bird proverb does not apply in Latvia. The agent would not sell one. An hour before the train was due there was a queue which wound through the waiting room and the buffet and out along the tracks in the rain. By train time there were at least a hundred people still waiting in line.
Koknese, formerly Kokenhusen, on the way to Daugavpils, clusters around the ruins of the Castle or Kokenhusen, built by Bishop Albert in 1209 and occupied by the Archibishops of Rigas from 1397 to 1566.
Photograph by J. Reeksta
Three hours late, tired to death, those overcrowded excursionists arrived home. The ticket inspectors had got so tired of waiting for the train that they opened a side door and let us out without taking up the pasteboards for which we had suffered so much.
The Latvian Switzerland is no credit to its namesake, but the dwellers on the great Baltic plains are not mountaineers. Although the hills are only 265 feet high, the people evidently had all the climbing they wanted. Those who are not Nature lovers could climb about as high in some of Riga's huge apartment houses, but this pretty corner of Latvia is full of charm for those who love shady bowers, a curving, quiet river, grassy banks, and a sense of peace.
At Sigulda, where crumbling rubble walls dating from 1208 bear the crest of the Krapotkins, I found a peasant hut so charmingly draped in some climbing vine that I asked permission to photograph it. The reply was in perfect English. The young Prince Krapotkin. whose family had owned the place for centuries and who had himself lived in the modern chateau which overlooks the wooded valley of the Gauja (Livonian Aa) and the three ancient castles, volunteered to show me around.
He is living in the peasant hut which had first caught my eye, but the caretaker entrusted to him the key to his former home, which the Government has taken over as a retreat for journalists. Aside from a few books, the great building was empty. Not a word of complaint was spoken by my companion, though he thought it a shame that the Government was not using the building of which it had possessed itself.
In Daugavpils, Where The Russian Frontier Is Felt
Daugavpils is on the line to Warsaw, tucked away behind a bund beside the Daugava near the southeast corner of Latvia. One cannot get the true flavor of the place until he calls the town Dvinsk and the river at this point the Dvina. though in doing so he must not confuse it with the Northern Dvina, which flows into the White Sea at Archangel.
Somewhere on the road from Riga we passed the invisible boundary between literate Latvia and provincial Russia. It is not so much that the Russian language figures more prominently in the spoken and printed word, as that the latter gives way to the picto-graphic. not as a trademark in our sense, but as an index of what is for sale.
It is not enough that boots and balalaikas, watches, and wine be exposed in the shop windows. A highly colored sign must also proclaim their presence. The Russian not only believes in signs, but depends upon them.
Daugavpils is only 330 miles from Leningrad, but the St. Petersburg station (as it is still called) was much damaged and no trains are running.
In Daugavpils the Russian frontier makes its presence felt, not as a bothersome formality, but as a dead line of commercial life. Grass is growing between the ties of a railway over which the famous Nord Express once dashed from London to St. Petersburg in less than two days.
The cheeriest place in town is the railway station. There are fresh flowers in the restaurant. The barber shop is without one of those ugly wax heads to which Latvian hairdressers are addicted. The news stand is well supplied. One wonders why the whole population doesn't go to the station and take a train — any train!
But that is not the nature of the Letts or the Russians. They stick it through, the Lett by determination, the Russian by philosophy.
The Lett is friendly, shrewd, conservative, persevering, without the «Nichevo» spirit of Russian fatalism. Having waited so long for his opportunity, having won his freedom against such odds, he is determined to make the most of it.
The life of the child in Latvia is seldom carefree or joyous. The sullen, heavy weather keeps him from romping in the open and at a very early age he must assume duties in the field or take care of the cattle.
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams